Hello … I’m sort of a returning member, from a few years ago. A
native Southern Californian [usa], and previously employed by
[husband and pre-marriage] as a graphic designer - I’ve taken the
past 3 yrs off becoming a mom to my 2.5 YO wonderful little boy whom
I adore. After a rough financial period and selling some newly
purchased equipment to make ends meet, we have moved into the house
in which I grew up, and there is a nice little workshop in the
garage area that my father used for woodworking and fishing tools
etc, that I’m setting up to do some small-scale silver work
[whatever that means - I’ve seen some pretty incredible stuff come
out of small places!]. I’ve been making jewelry as a hobby using
beads & wire since I was in high school [I’ll be 40 next month -
yikes!], and now, possibly in my “mid-life” stage, I’ve decided to
start a business - doing something I really love to do, instead of
something I can do, but I hate doing! So, primarily I’m working
with the beads and wire right now, and I’ve added PMC to the mix,
making small charms & links etc. I rather spontaneously created a
mini “line” for little girls, and got the guts up to approach 2
children’s boutiques here in town, and now they each have 4 of them
[2 which they bought straightaway and 2 on consignment]. As for
working with the PMC, I love it - but it is only getting me thinking
about what is it like to work with wax, and the potential
cost-effectiveness of having certain little charms ‘n’ things sent
out to have cast in sterling. I’ve never worked with wax though, I
like the clay form of the PMC, so there will be a learning curve [as
with everything else].

Anywho ~ I just got my tanks and torch setup - have not even fired
it up yet … I need to set up my “sink” [the 2 liter water jug that
will drain into a bucket], so I can set up my pickle pot which will
be complete with the “shut-off timer” as seen in the current issue
of LJ - by pulling the ‘on’ pin out of a regular timer I got at the
hardware store], so I can actually solder. In the meantime I’ve been
studying all the safety info, so I can sleep at night.

Looking forward to being a part of the list - I hope I don’t have
TOO many really stupid questions - the archives have been a
wonderful resource so far.

You might be interested to know that it is not necessary to work in
wax in order to make a mold of your piece (or have someine else make
one for you) and have it reproduced. A mold can be made from a PMC
model, for example, as long as you don’t mind the kind of surface
that it has on it. I use fabricated models for many of my production
cast pieces. Even other, non-metal materials can have silicone molds
made from them. Having your casting done for you might be a very good
move for you right now, rather than trying to buy all the equipment
and learn the whole casting business at once.

If you did get into making wax models, you still would need to have
them cast and then finish the casting before you would have a rubber
mold made. Vulcanized rubber molds hold up best for repeated use in
production casting. I did this before I got my casting equipment and
started doing my own casting and mold making. I shipped waxes off to
a caster, had them ship the cast model back to me, and I filed and
perfected and polished it. I then shipped it back to them, and they
added the sprues and made molds, injected waxes, and cast multiples
for me. At first I was finishing these myself, but eventually I got
a caster to also finish them for me, so that I was receiving a
handful of finished pieces from them, all ready to go!

There is a lot to learn about making models that will work well for
wax injecting for production casting, but if you keep your forms
simple at first, and confer with your caster, you can learn as you
go.

You might be interested to know that it is not necessary to work
in wax in order to make a mold of your piece ...

Thanks, M’Lou ~

I am aware of it… but was thinking that wax might be a littlecheaper to experiment and play with.

BTW I LOVE your horse head pendants/earrings. I may need to buy one. But of course, I will run into the problem I always have with
wearing other people’s jewelry - "That’s neat, did you make that?"
Um, no… Never fails. shrug